Don't play with it

***

Does anyone else hate the new bus system at school... so that the campus is a walking campus?

I was traipsing all over town and by the time I got to Grand Anse I was reluctant to wait on one of those unpredictable buses. I hate SGU's new bus system. I'm extremely reluctant to be walking up and down a hill in the hot sun... much less running behind these "pick up and drop off" buses. I'm almost certain that most existing "walking campuses" are on flat territory. Hello? Hills are bad for the knees?

***

So I nearly missed my Politics class today due to lateness - again. But I'm surely glad I didn't.

Today we dealt with a statement made by the President of Trinidad and Tobago that kinda struck home something that I was musing over myself in a different situation. The class discussion basically helped to shape exactly what was the underlying principle being violated.

Apparently the President, Kamla Persad-Bissessar, said “We will have to look at ways in which we would be able to assist. But you would recall my comments earlier this year, when I said there must some way in which Trinidad and Tobago would also benefit.” In the wake of the current Hurricane Tomas that did some damage to other Caribbean territories. As usual, I'm always late with news. My Prof. is St. Lucian so he was relating the events on what he's heard about the state of affairs over there, the wellbeing of his family, etc. It was a retrospective moment I believe for all of us in the class that endured Ivan in 2004.

Naturally, the territories want some assistance. People lost lives. Homes are destroyed. It was a traumatic experience. And the President is making a statement about doing a favour to get a favour.

True, what she is saying is not a lie. No one is contending a lack of truth in her words. Obviously, if you're going to help another country you're going to try to help yourself as well. You want both parties to benefit from the arrangement... Nothing is for nothing these days right? Hand wash hand make hand come clean? But is it really necessary to be that frank about it? That insensitive?

I was telling a couple friends a few weeks back that were dealing with personal issues within the group that they were miscommunicating. The words they were choosing were the truth but were delivering results whereby the other parties were taking offense and becoming defensive and further creating a rift.

I always say there is more than one way to say the same thing and get your message across without starting a war. One must learn to manage your mouth and not run away with the first impulses that tickle your throat to be uttered. While I haven't mastered the art of choosing my words carefully, in fact I have become rather rusty... It is the one major thing I took from my 2 year of Law at college - choose your words carefully. Take a moment, think, and then speak. And when you do speak, do so in a manner that's diplomatic at its worst but clear in it's meaning at its best.

And I'm sure we've all been in situations whereby the argument moves from the content and actual issues to the phrasing of how the issues were being delivered or addressed.

Now the consensus of the classroom from the discussion of the students was that placed in that situation, were any one of us St. Vincent or St. Lucia, due to the nature of the offer we would refuse it. Especially today with all of these efforts and talks about regional Caribbean integration and we're all one family - yet when disaster strikes there's commentary about seeking personal interests?

Imagine though the same message was framed differently... Let's say she said instead "In the wake of the devastation of the Hurricane, as part of the Caribbean Community, Trinidad and Tobago will naturally be willing to administer any possible aid within our means to our fellow territories in a many that would be beneficial to all of us."

Same underlying message - different phrasing. Who could vex wit da? Even if yuh vex, yuh won't be so vex to not accept the help begrugingly self.

Another quote that my Prof. had referenced was a quote by a Republican who said that they would do everything in their power to make sure that Obama is a "one-term President."

Again... again... mismanagement of your words. One speaks too loosely. Even if that's ultimately your intentions, the country doesn't need to know that. Your purpose is not even about supporting policies good for the country, it is about seeking party interests entirely?

To coin a quote my Prof. said that I really liked (mostly because of the alliteration is it?) was that "We need to rise above these petty party partisan politics and think about the country especially in these economic times where people are suffering."

That concludes my early evening rant.

***

Now that I'm here baby, show me a good time.
Shelli out.

UFOs in New York? Does anyone remember the UFOs hovering over China recently? Like a month or so back... And Germany? What's up with all of these sightings? Hmm...

http://www.ufoevidence.org/topics/hudsonvalley.htm

I love Google. I really do. I believe Google even owns Blogger right now... and if they didn't, then I wouldn't have been one of the first to get exclusive access to Gmail when it was first launched... Since then Google bought Youtube and formed numerous partnerships... launched an awesome browser (Chrome) and so forth.

However, in the back of my mind I've always wondered, am I the only that sees a problem with all that power? I remember back when I discovered that Google tracks your searches, the sites you frequent. There's supposed to be a feature somewhere, not that I remember how to get back to it, that shows you the history of your browsing by day, week, month, year. Sure, cool? I say creepy. But that was years ago... This article here discusses the privacy issues from then and this one as of current.

I mean... don't you think it's weird that one company should have so much information about you? Your emails, your browsing, your chat conversations, phone conversations, etc?

No one man should have all that power...♫  The clock is ticking I just count the hours...♫

I've always asked, so what if one day Google should become interested in me then? Some grand scale lawsuit comes up that requires to pull information about my online habits? I mean the chances are slim, but it's not a complete impossibility now is it? Stranger things have happened, even if such a case hasn't happened yet, it simply means there's potential for anyone's goose to be plucked, stuffed and cooked with the ease of a few clicks. ...

CNET...

If search history, e-mail and registration information were combined, a company could see intimate details about a person's health, sex life, religion, financial status and buying preferences.

It's "data that's practically a printout of what's going on in your brain: What you are thinking of buying, who you talk to, what you talk about," Bankston said. "It is an unprecedented amount of personal information, and these third parties (such as Google) have carte blanche control over that information."

Sure, they won't reveal your information to 3rd parties. *Shrug* That's what they all say... I'm just saying it's not impossible for some shade of gray area to pop up requiring the information being released. And then what?


So what inspired this? Msn's article today about invasion of privacy by a Google employee.

Creepy Google stalker proves your privacy is an illusion

-Helen A.S. Popin

David Barksdale lost his job at Google after parents complained that the 27-year-old Site Reliability Engineer violated the online privacy of at least four minors, reports Gawker. According to the story, Barksdale used his elite position to tap into Google voice phone logs, accessed Google contact lists and chat transcripts, and in at least one incident, unblocked himself from a Google Talk buddy list after the teen account owner blocked him.

...As Ryan Single recently wrote on Wired's Epicenter blog (in a post delineating Google's better practices), "They hold onto search and other profile data for too long, and their'anonymization' of the data after 18 months could be easily reversed. They still turn on thecreepy 'Web History' by default for all account holders, which is an egregious privacy choice (however, this 'feature' only records your searches and the places you visit from a search result page, unless you use the Google Toolbar in your browser, which records everything when ‘Web History’ is enabled)."

...The problem is with people, and until Skynet, there's no getting past that reality. Speaking of egregious pop culture references, who here hasn't played "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," embracing that tingly feeling of power you get when your search engine superpowers to uncover even the most benign intimacies belonging to people you know in real life?

...With elite access comes great responsibility, sometimes too tempting to resist. That creepy Google engineer stalker guy isn't so much an anomaly as he is evidence that your online privacy is gone gone gone, and it ain't never coming back.

So now we don't even have to wait for 3rd party prompting. We could just wait on some employee on the inside to abuse the information access. 

What do you think?

Shelli out.